I am still Rifting away, though admittedly much less frequently than in the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, I am still enjoying Rift, I’ve just been busy with a new job (yaay real life, lol). I know a lot of people seem to be coming to the end of their vacation time in Telara and are returning home to the comfortable awaiting arms of old Azeroth, but not this gamer! (Not yet anyway) Sure, I’ve been thinking about WoW, I still listen to a couple of WoW podcasts, so I have a pretty good idea as to the goings-on in Azeroth these days, but any time I have an inkling of an urge to reactivate my account, I think about how frustratingly boring my last few months after the Cataclysm were, and how lonely it was, and all urges pass. I think it’s just easier to be a solo(ish) Rifter than WoWer.

Plus Rift is new, there are hills yet to climb and dungeons yet to explore, but in WoW I’ve done it all; I’ve been to every part of the world (more than once), I’ve been part of a 40 man raid, I’ve earned achievements that took a whole year to complete, I’ve made more gold than I ever thought possible for me, I’ve run a guild, planned events, led raids, made lasting friendships, made enemies, leveled and leveled and leveled some more. A little while before I deactivated my account I added up all of my “/played” time and it was over 300 days across all of my characters! That’s basically a whole year of my life that I spent entirely in Azeroth. Kind of crazy considering it’s a video game and all! Rift is just more long-time-gamer-who-is-now-casual friendly! It’s complex and holds my attention, but if I don’t log on for three days in a row, it’s no big deal! I don’t have anyone to answer to, I’m not kicking myself for missing important rep dailies or letting my auctions go unattended, it just doesn’t matter as much as it did in WoW.

I think that possibly has more to do with me than the two games. I was pretty addicted to WoW for a long time, and I’m not addicted or attached to Rift in the same way. I enjoy it and it’s fun, but if they were to pull the plug on Rift tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a huge issue for me. WoW on the other hand, even though I’m not playing it anymore, if I found out all my characters were gone, or that they were shutting down the servers for good, I’d be heartbroken and probably cry! It’s kind of weird to have an attachment like that to a virtual world, but I have spent six years there, lol. I don’t have anything against WoW and I kind of envy those of you who still have fun playing it. I just feel like there’s nothing left for me there.

I was discussing the difference between our first WoW characters and first Rift characters with my boyfriend and he commented that although it’d been fun getting to level 50 in Rift, it hadn’t compared to those first 60 levels in WoW. I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison though. Sure it’s the journey to level cap in two very similar MMORPGs, but WoW was the first MMO we’d ever stepped foot into. I don’t think any game could ever truly compare to that experience! In the first few days of WoW I was in awe that all those characters we were running past while playing were actually other real people, but I was already long accustom to such things by the time I tried Rift.

I don’t really know where I was going with this, I’d started it a couple weeks ago intending it to be a “Rift Is Still Fun” post, explaining my experience with the River of Souls event and that I wasn’t upset at all by how it all happened (likely because I was one of the lucky few who made it online and got all of the achievements the way they were intended) but that’s pretty old news now! I’ll just leave you with what I have here, hopfully the few of you checking back enjoy hearing from me, even if it is a bit scattered and spontaneous! I am still here (just busy) and I am still reading all of your comments and e-mails (and will respond as soon as I have the proper time to do so)!

4 Responses to “Rift-a-Rific”

WoW is too addicting to actually give up. Very few games can compete with it now just because it has been around for so long. Blizzard is able to keep it polished and has a working formula. I think the best contenders might actually be the Free to play games, which is why I think Guild Wars 2 has a good chance of actually being competitve.

yea…my nephews are stayin with me this summer and they kinda resparked my interest in WoW lol do i msde toons with them and we’re playin together, no RAF cause its not about lvl cappin now its just about playin the game for fun…when were not outside at the park lol =p

Deadfajita : I agree that nothing will ever really top WoW until someday all the servers are shut down and even then it will probably be something Blizz has made that is on top. In six years Rift might be pretty amazing, but WoW would have had six more years of content on top of what it already has by then, lol. It’s unbeatable and yes, very addicting. Admittedly I have been missing it a little bit lately…